ORONO – Describing last year’s Building Community Through the Arts program, area high school teachers found themselves resorting to superlatives.

Miraculous, thrilling, unbelievable, they said about the two-week project in which performance artists from throughout the state helped students in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties create a dance or play as a vehicle for discussing school violence, harassment, peer pressure and alienation.

This year’s artist residency program will culminate in a conference from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20, at the University of Maine, Class of 1944 Hall. Chancellor Terrence McTaggart will speak at 9:30 a.m. in Minsky Auditorium.

Students from Brewer, Hampden, Hermon, Old Town and John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor will discuss their particular activity, describe the creative process they went through, and reflect on the community building impact of their experiences.

Funded by grants from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation and the Penobscot Valley Health Association, the event is free and open to the public. Lunch can be purchased.

Impressed with how last year’s program allowed students to explore personal beliefs, understand each other’s perspectives, and reconsider their own attitudes and behaviors, teachers said recently that they jumped at the idea of participating again.

“It was too good an opportunity to pass up,” said Walt Sheren, a sociology teacher at John Bapst.

The class “really came together” last year as students created a skit dealing with what it feels like to be excluded, he said.

“There was no longer any petty, adolescent behavior or put-downs; they really began to trust and respect each other.”

The project dovetails nicely with other community efforts to make life better for young people, according to Susan Potters, director of the Maine Alliance for Arts Education, which is sponsoring the second annual event along with Acadia Hospital and United Way – Greater Bangor Communities for Children.

During Acadia’s Community Conversations Program on Thursday, Oct. 19, when Dan Johnson, clinical supervisor for the hospital’s Adolescent Services speaks about teen stress, students will offer a preview of the skit on teen stress that they plan to present the next day at the

The Greater Bangor Communities for Children – a group of 60 towns which has pledged to provide a caring environment for learning, gives youth the opportunity to be useful, and enable families to develop positive communication – helped MAAE members publicize the conference by putting them in touch with hundreds of social service representatives who are interested in what youths have to say.

Meanwhile, at Central High School in Corinth, literature and creative writing teacher Anne Bowman said she is expecting big things from this year’s program.

“I was amazed with what I got to see last year,” said Bowman, whose students improvised scenarios that dealt with family violence.

“Kids were able to relate to each other better,” recalled Bowman. “Not only did they face issues, but they were forced to be vulnerable in front of each other. They learned there are people they can trust who won’t take advantage of their vulnerability.”

One boy initially was more interested in basketball than English class, according to Bowman.

“But after this experience, he was one of us, he was part of the group,” she said.

The program offers “another way of looking at literature,” said Hampden Academy English teacher Lisa Scofield, whose students last year performed interpretive dances of scenes from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

“It really helped students pay attention in a way that was different and new – they created art from art,” said Scofield.

During the current program, Scofield’s classes choreographed haikus, a Japanese form of poetry. “They had to move and share their ideas, and they really met each other in a different way,” said the teacher, calling the project “healthy and insightful.”

“This is as important as broccoli – it’s nutrition for the soul,” said Scofield.

Other schools in the Penobscot-Piscataquis region will participate in the program over the next few months.

The arts are a wonderful way to address a community’s needs, according to Potters.

“Teen-agers get great satisfaction out of expressing their feelings,” she said.

When students evaluated last year’s program, “it meant so much to them that people cared what they thought,” she pointed out.